Adverbs and the Road to Hell

While many languages are romantic and flowing, English is muscular and lean. It permits a direct discourse of cause to effect: subject kicks object.

English is well-suited for marketing and exaggeration. The adjective assumes a higher importance than the thing. The adjective precedes the noun. What strikes with more force in the following sentences? It was a bright cold day in April. . . or, I am an invisible man. Day and man have a secondary emphasis to bright, cold and invisible. The adjective can replace and become the noun: The Bold and the Beautiful. The adjective can follow an indicative verb and the noun equals the adjective. I am cold.

English stylists of the terse school of writing have long declared that the most important part of speech is the verb. If you select the right verb, you've constructed a forceful sentence. I phrase this advice as: "Choose the strongest, most vivid verb your sentence will allow."

From MacBeth's soliloquy.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's [is] but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

We have vivid movement verbs carrying a heavy weight: creeps, struts, frets. We have the sensory verbs; lighted, heard, told. As in death, the light is to be snuffed out (out!). Even the humble verb "is" is used to equate two nouns: Life equals a walking shadow; Life equals a tale told by an idiot. What does all this mean? Shadows, idiot tales, poor players, fools. It signifies nothing.

In line with the supremacy of the verb, stylists consider the adverb to be the lowliest part of speech. The adverb says: I didn't get the verb right and now I have to modify it. Ben Blatt, in his sprightly look at literature by the numbers, Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve: And Other Experiments in Literature cites Stephen King's advice, "The road to hell is paved with adverbs."

Adverbs are like cholesterol: you have the good and the bad forms. Blatt divided out the bad form: the -ly adverbs, and then counted. Stephen King uses 105 -ly adverbs per 100,000 words. Hemingway, a spare 80. Blatt further goes on to demonstrate that many authors have fewer adverbs in their most acclaimed books. Faulkner had 31 and 42 adverbs per 100,000 words in As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury, respectively, but had 130 or more in the forgettable (and forgotten) Soldiers' Pay and Mosquitoes.

Suddenly.

Blatt examines Elmore Leonard's writing advice. One rule admonishes against the use of the adverb, "suddenly." He shows graphically how Leonard over his career had forty plus suddenlys per 100,000 words in his first four books and not once in his last nine novels.

How do mystery novelists perform with "suddenly?" In marking the performance of 52 authors, Blatt includes the performance of five who were primarily mystery writers.

Suddenlys per 100,000 words

Dan Brown, 59
Agatha Christie, 46.
James Patterson (22 Alex Cross books), 38.
Gillian Flynn 29.
Elmore Leonard 9.

This group fairs more poorly than the median rate for all authors he analyzed (24 per 100,000). Dan Brown has more suddenlys than some authors have total adverbs. I have no doubt he is laughing raucously all the way to the bank.

How well do I perform? I have three published novels and one novella. These average out at 71 adverbs per 100,000 and 3 suddenlys/100,000. While I don't go out of my way to follow Leonard's rules, they have invaded my writing style.

I have previously characterized Elmore Leonard's rules as: Do not write like a 19th century author whose fainting couch overfloweth.


While composing this post I was reading Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Circular Staircase, (1908), a classic in the genre of spooky house with mysterious goings-on. I could not help but noting, again and again, adverbs modifying everything. After finishing I tallied up the incidents: 140 adverbs and 36 suddenlys per 100,000 words.

The rate of the use of the word "suddenly" by seven mystery writers. Patterson represents James Patterson's 22 Alex Cross novels. Rinehart is Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Circular Staircase. Most of this data came from Blatt's book, referenced above.

In Praise of the Adverb.

The terse, lean language advocated in The Elements of Style and by others is not the only worthwhile form. Choosing to write effusively, rather than directly, is another choice. English can be a nimble language and its phrasing can be made to reflect that of the romantic languages.

From my pre-adolescent days, I remember reading a Reader's Digest article that spoke of a study which found that people who used adverbs in their speech were more likeable (and you can be more likeable using adverbs!). Ever since, I've noted authors who exploit this. "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." (The movie version. The book version had two adverbs in the sentence). Within dialogue, exclamation points and adverbs and indirect speech serve to make a character colorful. My personal touchstone example of indirectness and repetition being used to make a character endearing is M*A*S*H's Radar O'Reilly. For example, "There might be naked female personnel showering in there with their clothes off!" and "Of course I could, but I'm not. I mean, I do, but I didn't!" I can't find the quote online, but from memory: "You're a female woman of the lady gender."

So, why all of these admonitions against adverbs? They are often found among the laziest and most amateur of writing. Good writing is never lazy. Good writing chocked full of adverbs and imprecision demands an even steadier hand at the helm: you are traversing choppy waters.

Previously:

How Well Do Famous Authors Follow Elmore Leonard's Rules for Writing? Part One.
How Well Do Famous Authors Follow Elmore Leonard's Rules for Writing? Part Two.
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 Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press.

Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press

Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.

Hard cover: Amazon US
Kindle: Amazon US
Hard cover: Amazon UK
Kindle: Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble 

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How Well Do Famous Novels Follow Elmore Leonard's Rules for Writing? Part Two.

I have launched upon an analysis to see how often great authors in great novels follow the advice of Elmore Leonard. Specifically, I set out to track how well these measurable rules were followed:

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said"…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

In my previous entry, I looked at the 19th century with representative works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson. The publications of these novels were spaced out over the decades (1830, 1853, 1886) and each were by British authors writing stories set in England.

Joseph Conrad

In order to continue my analysis into the 20th century, I chose Joseph Conrad as my first candidate. Having learned English as a young adult, Conrad wielded his adopted tongue with precision. With a foreigner's eye he saw England not just as a caste-system of mannerisms, but as a two-faced landscape of heros who were antiheros and antiheros who were antiheros. He dissected the horrors of imperialism in Journey Into Darkness, and, in The Secret Agent, he took apart the nascent worlds of espionage and terrorism. In every sense, this work is the perfect entry to follow Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson's book was published in 1886 and set in London. The Secret Agent was published in 1907 and set in 1886 London. Both dealt with individuals with dual personalities. The Secret Agent is a step forward into the future and acknowledgment of the past.

Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (1907). 90,100 words.
No prologue and doesn't begin with a storm. No suh, no problems with patois.

The list of sins.

• 57 suddenly's. (6.3 per 10,000 words)
• 250 exclamation marks! (27.7 per 10,000 words)
• 212 dialogue tags that begin with "he" or "she." "Said" represented 75 entries while a dizzying 56 other verbs made up the remaining 137. (35.4% said)
• Of the first fifty instances where said appears as a dialogue tag, twelve had an adverb modifier. (24%).

Worst offense: "Poor!  Poor!" he ejaculated appreciatively.

Verdict: Although Conrad helped develop the modern novel with his use of troubled, ambivalent protagonists, the author continues to lean on the conventions of Victorian writing. On the other hand, others have described his work as "fully awesome."

Dashiell Hammett

At long last we cross the Atlantic to look at a work that defined the flint-hearted private eye. The drinks are stiff and the dames deadly. One expects little by the way of nonsense and a slap across the face for breaking Leonard's rules, or as Spade says: "And when you're slapped you'll take it and like it." While the previous entries in my analysis were in public domain which allowed downloading and ready counting by computer program, this and the following books were hand tallied. 

Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon (1930). 66,373 words.
No prologue; no opening with weather. No problems with patois.
 
The list of sins.

• 13 suddenly's. (2.0 per 10,000 words)
• 75 exclamation marks! (11.3 per 10,000 words) (14 dialogue exclamation marks when the true nature of the statuette is revealed.)
• 320 dialogue tags that begin with "he" or "she." "Said" represented 178 entries while other dialogue verbs made up the remaining 142 (55.6% said)
• Of the first fifty instances where said appears as a dialogue tag, seven had an adverb modifier. (14%).

Worst offense. No awful dialogue tags, but several persons do growl when they speak.

Verdict: Lean and mean, a no-nonsense form of writing.

Thomas Harris

Star Wars is a great film. Its success, however, helped cripple great film-making, evicting edgy auteurs from the studios and launching Hollywood on a blockbuster escapist binge that continues to this day. Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs suffers from this same curse. Its immense popularity unleashed such an onslaught[er] of fictional serial killers that it is hard to walk through the mystery section of a bookstore without having book covers demanding your liver and slurping at you.

On the other hand, it is impossible to ignore its direct and forceful storytelling and its creation of iconic characters. It is ranked #16 among the Mystery Writers of America's list of the top 100 mystery novels of all time.

Thomas Harris: The Silence of the Lambs. (1988) 97,811 words.

No prologue, no opening with weather. No problems with patois.

The list of sins.

• 9 suddenly's. (0.9 per 10,000 words)
• 16 exclamation marks! (1.6 per 10,000 words)
• 99 dialogue tags that begin with "he" or "she." "Said" represented 91 entries while other dialogue verbs made up the remaining 8 (91.9% said)
• Of the first fifty instances where said appears as a dialogue tag, zero had an adverb modifier. (0%) This does not mean it did not occur in the book, just not in the first fifty sampled.

Worst offense. (...big Amarone? Someone as literate as Lecter couldn't come up with a better adjective?)

Verdict: I raise a toast with a big Amarone.

In contrast to the graph presenting 19th century authors, exclamation marks are now presented per 10,000 words. They are much less common.

For Thomas Harris, in the first fifty uses of the word "said," none of were marked with an adverb.

Said % reflects how often "said" was used to tag dialogue compared to other verbs "commented," "grumbled," etc.

Said/adverb % reflects the percentage of times (in the first fifty occurrences) that "said" is modified with an adverb.

Further details of the method of the analysis are in the first post.

Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my thriller, A Predator's Game.

A Predator's Game is available in soft-cover and ebook editions through Amazon and other online retailers.

A Predator's Game, now available, Rook's Page Publishing.

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Back page blurb.

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, features Nikola Tesla as detective.

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